Petersburg, the capital of endless political intrigue: from Peter the Great to Putin, how many murders, revolts and revolutions

Here it is, Petersburg: “Its sublime beauty - all that dense and compelling intertwining of columns, monuments, domes, caryatids, sphinxes, atlases that hold the sky in their stone hands and cast iron rosettes on the railings of canals, bridges and perspectives, spires and facades, claustrophobic well courtyards and panoramas that open out to the sea - is inextricably linked to its history of power.”